


Someone call a doctor

by bluebells



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Field medic Lucio in action, Graphic descriptions of severe injuries, M/M, Near death experience and musings, Protective Team Talon, somewhat pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 16:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12391554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: Wherein Akande is seriously injured in battle, alone, and fucked because Talon doesn't have healers.





	Someone call a doctor

**Author's Note:**

> For flamefox345. I'm sorry this is so late! 
> 
> My Overwatch stories are becoming cautionary tales about bad plays. Hashtag-Group up with me.

Over forty years of training, conditioning his mind, augmenting his body, and it's a rookie mistake that ends Akande Ogundimu.

Sprawled on the cold concrete of the Lijiang's warehouse, his gauntlet sparks at his side. Hacked and shorted, his prized possession is reduced to an oppressive dead weight anchoring him to the floor.

Why didn't he think to upgrade his gauntlet to shield from EMPs when he first recovered it?

He had watched Sombra disable enough enemies under his command. He knew how destructive an EMP could be in the digital, augmented age. He just never considered it would happen to him.

Doomfist was not meant to skulk in shadows, leaping from cover to cover. He had charged ahead of his team, and his pride had been his undoing.

But not from the enemies he expected.

"Vialli sends his regards."

Once Akande's head clears enough to understand what’s happened, he assesses the situation: the fact that he no longer has feeling below his shoulders. That his right arm is likely broken, and moving his left brings a lightning storm of agony. Breathing alone, is a rictus of effort, something in his chest creaking, brittle and pained with every breath.

Akande Ogundimu was a strong man, but not even he could contend with a full storage container being dropped on his head.

If he lives through this, a world of pain is waiting for Vialli’s loyalists.

It takes the last of his strength to ease the mass of steel high enough, drag himself free. His stomach rolls at the crushed mess of his legs, jagged bone and torn flesh. His hips are broken, judging by the fact he can’t ease any weight on them without imminent threat of passing out.

The pain eclipses everything. Akande comes back to himself, sprawled back on his elbows, a sweating, shaking mess, his entire body in one throbbing miasma of agony.

He breathes out a thin, rattling exhale of calm, and almost hitches into a coughing fit. Almost, but does not. Small victories.

"Reaper," he tries for the fifth time in long minutes, voice strained. The rows of warehouse lights blur overhead through his haze. He’s losing focus. "Come in, Reaper."

His comm crackles in his ear, soft with static. For a moment, it clears.

"Boss?"

The weight of relief releases from his chest, but he’s being held together by willpower and sinew, it’s no respite.

Sombra almost sounds worried. Such concern will be her end, one day. But _this_ day, Akande is grateful.

"Sombra, listen--"

Her audio cuts over his own, hushed and tense. "Gabe, still no answer. I have an opening, I could go in. He might already be inside holding radio silence."

Akande frowns. Is his audio not sending?

"Non, I do not have eyes on him," Lacroix murmurs. Akande can see the sniper in his mind's eye: focused and intent, peering down the sights of her scope from her high perch in the tower, scowling at the perimeter.

A throaty growl trembles through the comms. Reaper, suspicious and already recalculating. "Sombra, regroup. I smell a rat."

A shock of electricity makes Akande wince and tear the small device from his ear with his left hand. It costs him a mini seizure of pain that holds him hostage, braced against it for what feels like a small eternity until the ringing in his ear and white smear of his vision, settles to a tolerable throb of anguish.

His head drops back to the concrete with a grunt of effort.

It’s a race now for his team to find him before he drowns in his own blood. Akande doesn’t hold out hope.

He wheezes, slow and careful, blinking into the glare of the overhead spotlights.

The ground is chilling. The warehouse is hauntingly quiet. He is alone.

If Vialli's successors had the nerve, they would have stayed to ensure they finished the job, but there is some vengeance in this manner of killing: making him understand and weather the grievous scale of his injuries, before his frailty finally ends him.

Akande Ogundimu, strongman. A champion. Failed by his own pride and broken body.

The thought of dying alone, really dying, begins to sink into his bones. He shivers harder against the cold of shock and blood loss. His head pounds with the force of blood roaring in his ears, the panicked charge of his body trying to incite some last inspiration from the brain.

_Save us. We're dying._

A new thought bubbles through the panic: What if his team don't find him? What if his body is never recovered and he simply… disappears? Will Reaper take over his unit? Would he carry on Akande's vision? What would happen to his people?

It's a small consolation that his family already consider him dead, disowned once his work with Akinjide was exposed. At least there will be no second blow for them.

Still. His heart is traitorous and it’s almost a lethal blow when his chest tightens further, thinking of his family. Realising he doesn’t know of their health.

He hasn’t seen his mother in eight years. Will her hair be all white now?

The roar in his ears is fading to a wispy _shh-shh_ of sound.

He is too delirious from pain and blood loss to understand when a profile cuts across the fallen storage container, streaking through the glare of spot lights and skidding to a stop on concrete.

He is already unconscious when the light hand settles on his shoulder.

///

Soft music coaxes Akande from the black tide of unconsciousness.

He is eased into awareness by a gentle beat that warms through his body like summer heat on a dark night.

And then the pain lances back in.

"Ngh!" Akande snarls, teeth gritted against the shock of agony that throws his eyes open, disoriented and blinking wide.

He does not understand what he's looking at: a blur of vivid gold, green and blue, filling his vision, moving above him. A hand on his shoulder, holding him down.

"Hey, hey, easy," a firm voice soothes him. "You're in really bad shape. Med evac is on the way, but we need to stabilise you, okay? Don't move."

Akande's head falls back to the floor. He lacks the strength to keep it up, to even keep his eyes open.

"Hey, stay with me!" Something warm is on his neck; a hand, a heat pack maybe. It's nice. "Stay awake! Hey!"

A hand gently slaps Akande across the face. He drags his eyelids open and fingers snap in his vision to draw his attention, keep him focused.

"My name's Lúcio," the voice says, and Akande registers the dark blur of a face above him, reconciling into the lines of a nose, thick lips, and intent, dark eyes, narrowed in concern. The man is young. In Akande's vulnerable state, the thought blooms uninhibited, that this man is also quite handsome. And still speaking, "I'm a medic. I'm going to help you. If you can hear me, blink three times for 'yes'."

Akande frowns. Concentrates. Following such embarrassingly simple instructions should not be so difficult.

But the man above him -- Lúcio? is smiling, and nods in encouragement.

"Good, that's great. I'm holding your left hand now. Can you squeeze down for me?"

Akande searches in his mind's catalogue for whatever feeling connects to 'left hand' and it must take him longer than expected, because Lúcio nods again, but his smile thins with tension.

"Okay, that's all right. You're doing great. Med evac is two minutes out, I've stopped what bleeding I can and gave you a biotic shot. It will boost your vitals until we can properly stabilise you. Our doc is the best in the world, you're going to be okay, just stay with me."

Akande smiles, even as his throat tickles wet with the thick cloy of blood.

He won't be going anywhere in a hurry.

Lúcio returns it, grinning. "Hey now, that's what I want to see. Everything's gonna—"

He stops with a frown, pulling back and unfurling the palm clutched in his hand. When Akande can next focus, dizzy and vision smearing white again, Lúcio is holding up Akande's ear comms for inspection, first to his eyes then to his ear.

If Akande had half a brain cell left for caution, he might have worried what Lúcio could overhear on the channel.

It feels like seconds later that he's dragging his eyes open again, lurching from beneath a black wave into a cacophony of discord. It floods and drowns the soothing eddies of the healing song.

It takes Akande a while to parse the vision of the three guns pointed at the medic’s head. Lúcio crouches over Akande protectively, arms raised in surrender.

"Hey, hey, it wasn't me!" he is shouting, expression hard and annoyed.

Akande would recognize the barrel of those shotguns anywhere. The electric lavender of Sombra's automatic pistol is impossible to mistake, even in Akande’s dislocation from reality.

So, his team found him after all. He almost smiles.

Akande does not see Lacroix. She is likely holding the high ground, protecting their exit as she should be.

"He's dead without emergency medical care," Lúcio is saying, once Akande begins to understand. "How are your healers?"

"They're more R&D than A&E, if you know what I mean," Sombra’s gun does not waver from Lúcio's temple.

"You're a medic. We could take you with us," Reaper threatens.

Lúcio drops the pretence of surrender, medical imperative overriding. "No way! 65% of his bones are crushed or shattered, he's lost way too much blood, he still has internal bleeding, a severe concussion, and if he doesn't get into surgery immediately, that tube I stuck in to help him breathe is gonna fail."

Tube. What?

"He needs a real doctor. One of the best is going to be here in 45 seconds. We can save your boss. If you let us."

"I know your doctors. And their costs," Reaper growls, but he lowers his weapons, sinking to crouch beside the medic who is now scowling.

Oh, Akande thinks. Lúcio is much nicer when he’s smiling.

"Reaper," Sombra's voice is tinged with worry again. "Look at him. It's bad."

Their shadows fall across his face and Akande blinks up into the shape of Sombra when she joins Reaper to kneel at Akande’s shoulder. Polished nails tickle at his throat, fingers pressing in to seek his pulse.

Reaper is silent for a long time, glancing over his shoulder to something Akande can't see.

He turns back at the fingers abruptly grasped in his sleeve. Akande grips with what pathetic strength he has left.

"Live," Akande chokes out, wet and gasping.

They have to get out. Akande needs them to live.

A boom of noise springs Reaper and Sombra into action, weapons raised high at the roof.

"I swear we'll take care of him," Lúcio says, as they retreat back-to-back, guarding each other.

Reaper thrusts a clawed hand at him, radiating menace. "I’m holding you personally responsible, medic. We'll be coming for him."

Akande’s team dissolves from sight, and a great shadow of wings cuts through the warehouse. Lúcio's hand settles on his collar bone, a reassuring weight, and Akande knows no more.

 

**Author's Note:**

> R&D: Research and Development  
> A&E: Accident and Emergency
> 
> I feel like that comparison could summarise Talon v Overwatch's entire attitude towards the fields of science and medicine. You know, if we were going to really push the joke that Talon has no healers ever (I don't believe that, but it's a notion).


End file.
